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Public Interests; The Stakes Are Low

This is the sound of the Reform Party's presidential nominating convention:

''Traitor! Traitor!''

''Brownshirt tactics!''

''No time for losers, 'cause we are the champions. . . .''

The meeting rooms of the Long Beach Convention Center have been the subject of a fierce territorial battle over the last few days. The tide finally turned in favor of the forces supporting Patrick Buchanan, who won the critical backing of the center's rent-a-guard service. ''All our rights are gone! We're being held prisoner!'' cried an Iowa delegate.

''It's happening all over America,'' said another Reform Party member, somewhat obscurely.

People, this is what our politics has been missing: rump caucuses and delegate challenges and speakers fighting for control of the microphone. The process that gave you the Mensheviks versus Bolsheviks, the nomination of Warren G. Harding and the Chicago Seven is back!

This would be one exciting political event if only anybody cared about the fate of the Reform Party.

It is, at least, a cautionary lesson in what happens when a political movement wraps itself around a single personality. For the last two elections, the Reform Party was exactly as popular as Ross Perot. When he lost interest, all that was left was a group of alienated political junkies with nothing much in common but a tendency to cultivate peculiar displays of facial hair.

When Pat Buchanan volunteered to become Mr. Perot's replacement, it apparently didn't occur to the party leaders that Mr. Buchanan would replace them with his own loyal lieutenants.

''Go home, you're nobody now,'' a Buchananite yelled at Russell Verney, the former party head. Then came total rupture, two conventions, two slates of officers, two balloon-blowing-up machines, two prospective presidential nominees.

You don't want to know the details. Let the authorities sort it out. This is God's way of punishing the Federal Election Commission for not doing more about campaign finance reform.

The ''Buchanan Reform Party'' now has control of the original hall, which is decorated with cranky-looking American eagles and lots of bunting, all paid for by you the taxpayers with federal funding. (This is supposed to be the party of election reform, but its convention has set the cause of federal financing back a decade.) The other side is meeting down the street, at the Long Beach Arts Center. The retired Queen Mary and a block-wide aquarium full of jellyfish are somewhere in between, along with ''Ice Dogs,'' which is either a hockey team or a really repulsive form of fast food.

While Party One celebrates the glory of Pat Buchanan, the rebels are going to nominate John Hagelin. Mr. Hagelin's qualifications to be president, which have already won him the nod of the Natural Law Party, include the facts that he's a physicist and a former professor at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. The two of them will duke it out in court for the $12.5 million in federal matching funds the party qualifies for.

''I believe firmly there is a chance Pat Buchanan will be elected president of the United States,'' said the candidate's sister, Bay. The explanation of how Mr. Buchanan is going to parlay the victory for control of the Long Beach Convention Center into the presidency involved repeated use of the terms ''free media'' and ''Hail Mary pass.'' But the main point seems to be getting Mr. Buchanan included in the presidential debates, with the help of ''pressure from the public'' and a battery of lawyers.

Actually, this whole convention is an excellent demonstration of why Mr. Buchanan should be kept out. The debates are for candidates who have to accept the discipline that comes with seriously attempting to win the support of half the voting population of the country. The Reform Party is currently not only a cheesy fringe operation, but a fractionalized cheesy fringe operation, torn between a man whose greatest political triumph was winning slightly more than a quarter of the vote in a New Hampshire primary and the guy from the Maharishi University of Management. Let them sink into obscurity in peace and quiet.